


soft embalmer of the still midnight

by elrohir



Category: No. 6 - All Media Types
Genre: Healing, Innocuous John Keats, Introspection, M/M, Nezumi is a Hot Mess, Rebirth, Reunion, Shion needs to take a Break, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-30
Updated: 2018-07-30
Packaged: 2019-06-18 13:38:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,740
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15487023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elrohir/pseuds/elrohir
Summary: Shion dreams of a world without walls.He wishes Nezumi were here to see it.





	soft embalmer of the still midnight

**Author's Note:**

> "O soft embalmer of the still midnight,  
> Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,  
> Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,  
> Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:"

Shion had a vision of a world without walls. 

 

He had physically achieved that vision within weeks of the fall of No.6, and as the healing of the past five years ran its course, gradually, the walls between people began to collapse as well. While discrimination still festered in small ugly pockets scattered throughout the city—especially towards former elites and West Block residents—the seeds of unity planted by the end of No.6’s isolation began to bloom. Shion’s mother’s bakery saw all sorts of customers these days.

 

He wished Nezumi were here to see it, this wall-less world so different from the closed-off city he spent his life hating. Five years ago, he promised reunion. His absence still ached dully in Shion’s chest, a painful sense of loss and loneliness that never quite went away regardless of how much he buried himself in work for the Restructural Committee. 

 

That ache used to sustain him, his lifeline binding him to Nezumi as much as the weathered copy of _Macbeth_ he kept on his bedside table. Now, though, it felt like a chain. He couldn’t move on.

 

He sighed into the mess of papers on his desk, too lost in thought to concentrate on reviewing the proposed budget for replacing the pollution-belching coal power of the West Block with cleaner solar energy.

 

In the second year of rebuilding, one of the projects Shion founded was the revitalization of parts of the wasteland immediately surrounding the blocks of the city, breathing new life into a dead land ravaged by the nuclear wars of the past. He and a team of his peers had spent three months developing a fertilizer that would heal the soil as well as neutralize the toxins still present.

 

The reclaimed land was already blossoming into a garden. The inaugural harvest of the new farmland had been modest, but bursting with the promise of a bountiful future. On his last visit to the West Block a month prior, Shion had walked from Inukashi’s hotel (recently renovated, but still covered in that unshakeable layer of West Block grit) to a new farm nearby. He could hardly believe that the green that stretched out before him had been nothing but the rubble and ruin of a past era’s mistakes just a few short years before. 

 

Staring out at the trees beyond his open window, his thoughts wandered back to Nezumi. The time they spent together had been short yet utterly transformative. Shion had been dead, living in a dead city trying to masquerade as alive, like a puppet with its strings being pulled. 

 

The West Block, on the other hand, teemed with stubborn life. It determinedly clung to survival in a barren land and took Shion with it. Nezumi, really, was the one who brought Shion to life, with his books and his lessons and his worldview so contrary to Shion’s own.

 

No.6, a dead city of dead people, and the West Block, more alive than anything Shion had experienced. 

 

With the dawn of the new age, its people, persistent as new growth after fire, still moved through the veins of the West Block, its blood and its bones. It had been years since Nezumi moved on from there, taking a part of Shion’s heart with him, but the lack of his presence hardly lessened the fierce (if illogical and fueled by nostalgia) protectiveness Shion felt towards the West Block.

 

Nezumi.

 

He pictured Nezumi, superfibre wrapped around his shoulders, standing in a flat, grey landscape punctuated only by stones and starved trees. By now even the mice that had stayed with him would have passed on long ago. 

 

 

Nezumi, no matter how much he tried to conceal it behind a stage mask and pointed jabs, needed an audience, needed companionship. Alone, he would self-destruct in the darkness of his own thoughts. Nezumi hated that Shion knew him that well. Perhaps that was part of the reason that he left.

 

Shion shook his head to clear it. The idea of Nezumi stuck wandering in the wasteland that separated No.6 from the rest of the world was anathema to him. It was impossible to be alive when surrounded by dead things. They would consume you.

 

Shion pushed his chair back and got up from his desk with a sigh. He used to think of Nezumi every time he sighed heedlessly.

 

He supposed he was no different now. He saw Nezumi in everything, from the Shakespeare in the park reminiscent of the tiny West Block theatre to the cherry cakes his mother brought by his apartment sometimes.

 

A chain indeed.

 

…

 

Shion ducked his head inside the small bookshop next to the park by his apartment. The owner, a grizzled man whose eyes were made keen by years spent trading rarities at the West Block bazaar, nodded at him from the counter. Shion smiled back.

“I’ve got a few classics on the shelf in the back,” the man said gruffly. “Poetry and the like. Special price for you.”

“That’s very kind of you, Mr. Winfield,” Shion replied.

It had become a tradition, of sorts, for Shion to visit this bookstore every year on the anniversary of Nezumi’s departure. Since paper books were still a new phenomenon in No.6, the selection was small, but every once in a while, mixed in with freshly-printed ones, Shion would spot a rare gem of a tome from the days before the old government had banned non-electronic books.

 

The first year, when the streets were still half rubble and Shion had stumbled in here by accident, numbed by the cold realization that it had been a whole twelve months without Nezumi, had been the most difficult to weather. The bookshop’s narrow aisles and tall shelves reminded him too much of Nezumi and the vast treasure trove barely contained by the small room they had shared. 

 

As time marched on, those raw memories scarred over and faded. Now, by the fifth year, Shion found healing in his annual ritual. If he filled his head with new memories, the old, painful ones would disappear.

 

Standing in front of the poetry shelf, secluded on the backside of the last of the tiny store’s three entire shelves, Shion ran his fingers idly over the shiny spines of the shop’s newer stock. It was about time that he completed his Keats collection, he mused, noticing a small, worn anthology that stood out from the rest. He drew it out and carefully leafed through its yellowed pages, the thick old paper rough and textured under his fingertips.

“ _‘Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole—_ ** _’_** ”, he mumbled under his breath, reading aloud.

A hand reached above his shoulder to pluck a book off the shelf above him.

"A poetry connoisseur, are you?" came the hand's owner.

“‘To Sleep’ by John Keats,” Shion replied absently, engrossed in his anthology.

“Ah, how does it go? ' _Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards, a_ _nd seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.'_ ”

Shion dropped his Keats on the floor.

 

He knew that voice like he knew his own.  His chest squeezed and he braced himself on the bookshelf, knees going weak. His eyes stung, but he forced himself to turn around despite the sudden tears.

“Nezumi.”

“Good to know you haven’t forgotten me entirely.”

The arrant familiarity of Nezumi’s voice struck him like a brand, though the years had weathered his appearance a little. He had cut his hair, dark and thick and close to his ears. Shion resisted the irrational urge to reach up and sift his fingers through it.

He didn’t know if he wanted to punch him or kiss him. Maybe he would do both.  His eyes were hot and wet and he felt ashamed for crying in front of Nezumi. He was supposed to be stronger than he was at sixteen. 

Nezumi picked up the book Shion had dropped on the floor. 

“Don’t you go mistreating the books, now,” he said, extending it towards Shion. It took a minute for him to register that Nezumi was trying to hand it to him. He took it back, fingers jittery, and wiped at his face with his sleeve.

“Nezumi. You’re back.”

“Clearly that’s been established.”

“How—why—how did you know I’d be—wait, Nezumi, don’t answer that.”

Shion’s mind whirled, going over the times he’d been here on this exact same day, looking for faces, voices, anything that would lead him to Nezumi. 

“Breathe, Shion.”

He gripped the bookshelf with one hand, knuckles white and knobby, and told himself to calm down. He needed to take this slowly. To think. Thinking, he could do.

He put the book he was holding haphazardly back in its place.

“Don’t answer that. Not here. Let’s go—somewhere else—“

Nezumi arched an eyebrow, but allowed himself to be led by the wrist out of the shop. 

 

…

 

When No.6 fell, the brilliant elation that burst in Shion’s chest recalled the triumph of biblical Jericho, a miraculous victory amidst impossible circumstances. Nezumi at his side had felt it too, his wild grin fierce and free, more battle-worn and beautiful than Shion had ever seen him. 

 

Standing on top of the Moodrop, Shion had felt dizzy beneath the light of the noontide sun, bright and exhilarating. He clutched Nezumi’s hand like he would never let go. He _couldn’t_ let go.

 

But the sun sinking in the smoky sky cast shadows over more than just broken walls. No.6’s people were broken as well, fractured and scarred by the collapse of a duplicitous government under whose control was the only life they knew. Suddenly left to fend for themselves, the citizens of No.6 were lost sheep without a shepherd.

 

Shion, too, felt lost and out of place.

 

Sometimes, still, he would catch a glimpse of his reflection and be startled by the stark white of his hair, or the mottled pink of the snake-like scar hiding beneath the collar of his shirt. Nezumi had called it beautiful, and perhaps it was, but at times it bitterly reminded Shion of the victims of the parasite wasp who didn’t survive its pupation. 

 

He could play his part in the redemption of the Holy City, in the ushering in of an era of rebirth, but it wasn’t just Nezumi’s promise that bound him.

 

He sighed, and let Nezumi into his apartment.

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter should be up soon. I'm looking at maybe three chapters here but we'll see.


End file.
